Of all the hubbub rightly surrounding the healthcare mandate handed down from the imperial throne of Barack Obama, one aspect of this issue has not been sufficiently discussed: the disturbing fact that sex has now made its way into nearly all aspects of American life. Many have written of the clash between First Amendment rights and those who would seek to curb them, while others have debated the moral evils of abortion, but few have sought to plumb the cause of it all: our national descent into the sexual gutter.

Without doubt or question, sex rules our airwaves, satellites and all the forms of human communication which comprise our leisure time. The subject of sex dominates our children's education and overflows into the fields of sports, music and the so-called arts. It is indeed impossible to watch or listen to any form of entertainment without being bombarded with direct or indirect references to, or advertisements for, sex; its attainment, its glorification or the improvement of its 'performance'.

When we speak of sex this does not, of course, refer to what was once known as conjugal love; that which in an ordered society is a beneficial and great moral good. No, the modern conception of sex is that exercise of bodily functions which exists only for the use of human beings by other human beings solely as instruments of physical pleasure; often perversely so.

This desire for unfettered access to sex is probably one of the greatest reasons for this country's unfortunate descent into the realms of atheism and agnosticism. "A loving God would never be against___:" fill in the blank with "hookups" or any number of sexual deviations. After all, a creator who did not intend for our bodies to engage in rampant and random sex cannot really be worthy of worship, can he?

This has resulted in the loss of the idea that humanity was blessed with a divine gift which, in our manner of reproduction, differentiates man from beast. It is no accident that, when building his empire, sex magnate Hugh Hefner modeled his Playboy magazine around the image of rabbits; and his crude joke has now become public policy: humans are now free to mate without conscience or consequence.

Since the so-called sexual revolution, the exaltation of sex has corrupted much of what this country used to hold dear, especially motherhood. Prior to the 1960s, no one--except maybe adolescent boys--really associated pregnancy with what moderns call "sex." Babies were brought forth as the natural extension of love between man and wife; the two becoming one flesh; the product of lawful marriage, which has always been the pillar of any civilized--or even uncivilized--culture.

Pregnancy was celebrated as the coming of a 'blessed event' or a 'bundle of joy' and mothers were revered as symbolic of America herself, along with baseball and apple pie. Today, pregnancy has been described as a "punishment" by our president, while full-time mothers are regarded as anachronistic failures by all but the most twisted of religious fanatics. So the inclusion of abortion and contraception into the area of healthcare is just the next step in the logical progression of the dismantling of marriage and motherhood.

Yes, sex has overtaken the common sense of otherwise sober Americans and now even intrudes itself into our government, via the despotic mandates of legislation that was unwanted by the majority of its citizens and blatantly unconstitutional. One wonders what our Founding Fathers would have though if confronted with the fact that in 21st Century America, sexual license would be included in the list of freedoms and inalienable rights to be protected and even funded by our government.

It's a pretty good bet that they would be repulsed, as they knew that unless base, sexual urges are curbed, the nation would soon be overrun by pederasty, pornography, social disease, the objectification of women and generations of fatherless children. Well, in the words of a so-called churchman, those chickens have indeed come home to roost.

Has sexual licentiousness existed for thousands of years? Of course; history, literature and even the Bible are full of it. But remember that those lurid biblical tales, Shakespearean tragedies and operas about 'the world's oldest profession' all came with moral lessons attached: participation in and glorification of illicit sex has always come with a price; the one we're currently paying.